Nirma sets eyes on IT

vadodara: nirma has set its eyes on it. the karsanbhai patel group, through nirma education and research foundation (nerf) and nirma institute of technology, is setting up a research and development cell with nit students as young researchers and with a thrust on turning it ideas into tangible products. the r&d cell, named ''nirma centre for excellence in information and communication technology'', has selected voip (voice over internet protocol) as its first project.voip is the technology that enables real-time transmission of voice signals as packets of data over the internet. the long-term benefits of voip include support for multimedia and multi-service applications, something which the contemporary telephone system can''t compete with. "we at nirma institute of technology have joined hands with the indian software industry to develop a centre for excellence wherein we expose and train our students on cutting-edge technologies which hold the potential to radically alter the future and impact daily life. the centre for excellence teams up some of the brightest students of the state and highly-qualified faculty members with globally recognised technocrats from industry," executive chairman of nerf n v vasani said. he said voip has been selected as the end-to-end application, the first project to start with for the nirma centre for excellence. under this project, the goal will be to develop a voip phone along with an enterprise voip gateway. an advanced technology laboratory for building these applications is already operational, vasani said. nerf has engaged vadodara based-madhu mehta and parag amin, both top-notch software professionals, as technology mentors for project voip. "project voip has the potential to become a success story. it has a commercial value and aims at creating an intellectual property. but at the core of this project lies the intention of offering intellectual stimulus to students who can turn ideas into tangible products that can benefit the entire community", mehta said adding, "industry and academia share a symbiotic relationship." "academia is the breeding ground for opinion leaders and consumers of tomorrow, whereas industry is the mentor and provides frame of reference for the academia. it is also the fertile incubator of new ideas and applications", mehta said. both mehta and amin are busy involving as many industries as they can in project voip besides their mentoring job. "it has been noted that industries involving themselves with academic institutions have found an edge above the others due to the sheer exposure of their products and technologies to the faculty and students alike. they have played a stellar role in promoting the associated company''s products and services into the industry, not to mention the enhanced brand equity as a good corporate citizen," amin said. about 40 students enrolled at the electronics and communication, instrumentation control and technology and computer engineering departments of nit have been picked to work on project voip. motivation for voip has also come with predications of considerable growth in the voip market in the next five years. current estimates put the annual growth rate for ip-enabled telephone equipment at 132 per cent between 1997 and 2002 with an expected market of some $3.16 billion in 2002. besides, the annual revenues for the ip fax gateway market are expected to increase to over $100 million from less than $20 million in 1996.